Once upon a time, when free speech ruled the Internet

The liberal meltdown over Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter and his move to make it a privately-held company is enough to make Spock's pointy ears go smooth and turn his green blood red. The illogic of the thought that permitting open and uncensored dialogue is a danger to freedom and democracy would probably go over with Spock the way one of Dr. Leonard McCoy's emotional rants did on "Star Trek."

The left doesn't want to engage those who disagree with their beliefs and policies. They want to silence them. Why don't they want to put the time and effort into debating? Are their positions indefensible? Is it easier to just silence the opposition instead of attempting to correct what's said?

It's mind-boggling. "How dare anyone want there to be free speech? Don't they realize how harmful it is? Musk is doing us all a grave disservice!"

It's obvious some of these folks have either forgotten, or have never learned, when true free speech ruled cyberspace. The world didn't end and democracy didn't collapse because people were able to state their positions as they saw fit. And it wasn't that long ago, either, when people weren't constrained by arbitrary rules or terms of service when they wanted to express themselves.

Before cellular data networks, before mobile devices and apps, before streaming services, before HTTP and the World Wide Web, there was an Internet. It was much simpler than the online experience we know today, but in many cases, it was much better even with very limited content.

There were three major components of the Internet in its infancy. One was electronic mail. People were able to send messages to one another without the need to put pen to paper. E-mail has stuck around and is now the preferred contact method of many.

Another component was a method of transferring large computer files from one user to another. The system and the process shared a name, File Transfer Protocol, or FTP for short. Using special software, individuals could share data that didn't fit on the portable storage media in use at that time. FTP is still used, although the methods have evolved and services like Dropbox or Google Drive are now prominent.

But the final piece of the puzzle was something that raised few eyebrows back then, but would give the censorship crowd fits if it was prevalent and popular today.

Usenet was, and remains, a decentralized system of various discussion groups. Imagine the old America Online message boards, or the bulletin board systems provided by local Internet service providers. Multiply that by a factor of 100, and you have Usenet. It originated at Duke University and access was primarily limited to scholastic and other institutional settings before the Internet went mainstream.

The various topic-specific categories were known as newsgroups. And if there was a certain topic of interest, there was probably a Usenet group dedicated to it. Were you a college basketball fan? There was a newsgroup to discuss it: rec.sport.basketball.college. Were you a fan of a particular music group; say, Rush or Chicago or Kiss? Interested in camping? Fishing? Cats or dogs? Did you want to discuss politics? A devotee, or a detractor, of Rush Limbaugh? A few keystrokes in a search box, and you could find a place to talk about nearly any subject.

When AOL opened its closed system up to the Internet at large in the mid-1990s, a number of new users discovered Usenet. Dialup ISPs provided Usenet access as part of their service package, along with an e-mail address and possibly some file storage so customers could host their own small Web sites or file servers. When the Web became the primary attraction for online users, a whole new audience discovered the wonders of Usenet as well. If you had access to a Usenet server, you could discuss whatever struck your fancy with like-minded folks.

What made Usenet stand apart from today's online discussion offerings, be they topic-specific forums, or social media sites like Twitter or Facebook, was the total lack of content control. Outside of a few specially-noted moderated groups, you could say whatever you liked without fear of censorship. Once something was posted, it couldn't be deleted unless the original poster initiated a "cancel" request, which wasn't always successful. If you didn't like what a particular individual posted, you could place the subject or the person in a killfile and never see their posts, or posts in that particular subject thread, ever again. The action even got its own name; "plonking," after the imaginary "plonk" sound a piece of garbage would make when dropped into a trash can.

As a decentralized system with no owner, there were no rules. If you didn't like something, you removed yourself from it instead of removing it from the realm of discussion. No one fretted that Usenet discussions could lead to the end of the free world. It was a simpler and better time for public discourse.

One would think that in a censorious period like we're now experiencing, Usenet would be flourishing as the place for free discussion. But circumstances have taken a toll.

Usenet is, at its core, a text-based service. Network News Transfer Protocol, or NNTP, was designed to distribute text messages. As technology involved, knowledgeable experts figured out how to convert non-text files into text, and then how to reassemble them. This allowed Usenet to become a place where users could post and download pictures, videos, music files, and even complete installers for software. It boosted Usenet's popularity and brought about the rise of paid Usenet providers, selling access to the system above and beyond what ISPs offered.

It's been said that the boom in both consumer home video systems and Internet access was fueled by pornography. People bought VCRs so they could watch porn movies at home, and then got Internet service at home for the same reason. So naturally, pornography started being distributed in newsgroups set up for sharing files. So it's not surprising that child porn became readily available on Usenet.

Since Usenet isn't a centralized service like Facebook or Twitter, and user anonymity is readily available, someone had to pay the price for the accessibility of child porn. Former New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer and his successor, the now-disgraced Andrew Cuomo, began a very public push against Internet providers who made Usenet newsgroups available. Spitzer managed to get convictions against two local upstate New York ISPs, and this spooked major providers into either severely curtailing Usenet access, or eliminating it altogether. Verizon, Comcast, Time-Warner, AT&T, and other big national ISPs got scared and discontinued Usenet. Even AOL, which introduced Usenet to the masses, dropped access before it finally shuttered its online service.

Usenet is still around today, although in a vastly scaled-back form. There are some free NNTP services that allow access to text-based newsgroups, as well as several pay services that provide all the groups, including the "binary" groups where files can be encoded and downloaded. Google Groups also offers access to text groups. But it has waned in popularity to the point where new Internet users may not even know what Usenet is or how to access it.

Why hasn't a fully free and open discussion system flourished in this era of account suspensions, heavy-handed moderation, and biased "fact-checkers?" One of my favorite newsgroups has been supplanted by a forum where moderators have to approve accounts and rule with an iron fist. Posts are frequently deleted, threads locked, and users banned, and personal biases frequently come into play in those decisions. I'm amazed that a number of people actually prefer that setup instead of doing their own work to filter spammers, topics, and posters they don't want to see.

I miss Usenet and have frequently lamented its current status and wished for its return. Perhaps Musk can convert Twitter into a similar outlet, although the 280-character limit for tweets is extremely limiting. But the fears about how Musk will manage the platform are unfounded. White supremacists, neo-Nazis, or Antifa activists didn't take over the world when Usenet was king. And society isn't going to collapse if Donald Trump is allowed to get back on Twitter and take shots at Liz Cheney or Mitch McConnell or Joe Biden. (For the record, Trump has indicated that even if his Twitter account is restored, he doesn't plan to return and he'll keep using the Truth Social service he founded.)

Relax, liberals. The end of the world isn't imminent just because someday soon, people may be able to practice free speech and tweet what's actually on their minds without fear of running afoul of some arbitrary rule. We survived Usenet. We'll survive a more unrestricted Twitter. That's a conclusion that Spock would find entirely logical.

We don't have a democracy to defend -- how the left is fighting against true freedom and democratic ideals

Every time I see some liberal complaining about how conservatives, Republicans, and Trump supporters are putting our American democracy in danger, I don't know whether to laugh or to cringe.

If these people had any sense, they would realize that the United States of America is not a democracy. This nation is organized as a constitutional representative republic. The founders realized the dangers of a true democracy, so they set the nation up as a conglomeration of states that can institute various systems of elective government.

You see it in the way some states have unique procedures. Nebraska has a unicameral legislature, while every other state has a bicameral one. Some states allow ballot initiatives or referendums on proposed legislation, which is about as close to a true democracy as we get in America. Some states allow for the recall of elected officials. Each state has its own constitution and a means for amending it. But it's obvious in the way the federal government was established that a democracy was not wanted. The president isn't chosen in a single election wherein the person who receives the most votes wins. The presidential election is actually the aggregate of individual elections in each of the states and territories, with the results weighted by population. The Senate was originally envisioned as a body that was chosen by and representative of the individual state governments, but the 17th Amendment changed that to take the selection of senators away from the state legislators and give it to individuals.

But if we did have a true democracy, it's not the American right that poses a danger to it. In issue after issue, the leftists have been the ones who have complained the most about the influence of individuals in the political process.

A number of public policy issues have risen to the forefront and angered and motivated members of the electorate. From the Wuhan Chinese virus to educational policy and curriculum, members of the public have grown sick and tired of the government's actions and are vowing to effect change.

This scares liberals. They don't want the public to have any influence over government policy. The government -- a big, nameless, faceless, entity that was created to be "of the people, by the people, and for the people" but has become a self-sustaining institution -- knows best. The people shouldn't control the government. The government should rule the people.

As parents and taxpayers organize to win school board seats and take control of school policy, the left is aghast. They don't want anyone else to have a say in what students are taught. Parents are rightfully concerned over the sexualization of their kids in the classroom, and the teaching of a flawed theory on race that pushes the false notion that America is an inherently racist country, decades after the Civil Rights Act was passed and nearly two centuries after slavery was abolished.

Much of the current wave of ground-level activism started when parents complained about various public school responses to the Kung Flu. They were angry about mask mandates and the closure of classrooms to in-person learning. Many of these educational issues were at the forefront of last  year's Virginia gubernatorial election, where Glenn Youngkin ran on a platform of turning control back to the parents and taxpayers and he defeated Clinton crony Terry McAuliffe.

If liberals really support democracy, then why don't they want the majority to control how tax dollars are spent? If they are the defenders of freedom, shouldn't they act like it?

An even more glaring example of this whole thing at play is how the left is reacting to what looks to be the imminent takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk. There have actually been commentaries written that say allowing free speech to flourish on Twitter or other online sources is a detriment to democracy.  And people take some of these buffoons seriously. Robert Reich, the former Clinton administration official whose intellect is roughly equal to his physical size, was one of the first to weigh in. He was roundly roasted for his opinion, as have been most people who think that actually allowing more free speech is somehow harmful to freedom.

The marketplace of ideas is a cornerstone of a democratic society. The answer to free speech with which you disagree isn't censorship. It's not less speech. The answer is more speech. If someone says something with which you disagree, no matter how outrageous it might be, the solution is not to silence them. The proper response is to counter them. Point out what they're wrong about and why. Let the truth prevail.

In a true democracy -- or even in a representative republic, which is the actual form of government under which we operate -- the voices of the people are supposed to prevail. Those who actually support freedom and democracy want the people to dictate how government works, not the government telling the people how to live, and they want a robust exchange of ideas from which the truth emerges.

In today's "up is down and down is up" world, it's those on the right -- the ones the left think are trying to destroy democracy -- who are fighting for our freedoms. And those on the left, who claim that conservatives are the enemies of democracy, are the true enemies of it.

A glaring double standard in Kentucky politics

During my time as a newspaper editor in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we didn't have the Internet -- much less data-enabled mobile devices -- to provide reams of real-time data at our fingertips. We relied on printed directories for vital information about many of the governmental agencies we covered.

Each year, my newspaper invested in a thick book offered by Clark Publishing called The Kentucky Gold Book. It was an invaluable resource for information on who was who in Kentucky politics. We referred to it often if we needed to call someone in Frankfort for details on a story.

I always perused each new edition of the Gold Book to learn my way around the labyrinth of state government, and one thing that always amazed me was the number of school teachers and principals who served in the General Assembly.

I had questions, such as, "How can these people leave their jobs for 60 days every two years to go serve in Frankfort? Doesn't it do a disservice to the students to have long-term teacher absences? How can these school districts justify paying these employees when they have these scheduled absences?"

Obviously, I knew that everyone who serves in the General Assembly has to leave work during a legislative session. My own representative worked for the railroad. But I figured that educators serving in the legislature was a different scenario, especially since tax dollars were involved. Were the needs of the students being served?

When I left the field of journalism to take a merit system job in state government in 1995, I had to learn an entirely new set of operating rules.  One eye-opening thing was the legal prohibition of civil service employees from holding partisan political office. Classified state workers under the merit system have to resign before they can even file to run for a partisan office. The only elective offices state employees can run for or hold are non-partisan positions such as school board, city councils, soil conservation boards, and other such offices.

In fact, state employees chafe under a number of restrictions on political activity that don't apply to other individuals on the public payroll.

Compare what state workers can do while engaging in the political process to the activities in which public school employees can participate. It's a glaring double standard. State workers can't organize fundraisers or bundle campaign contributions. They can't take part in certain campaign events or political organizations. They can't be local party officials. And even within the limits of what is allowed, a double standard exists. My hometown of Beattyville elects its mayor and city council members on a non-partisan ballot, so state workers are allowed to run for municipal office. One county seat west, in Irvine, the mayor and council candidates run under partisan ballots, so state workers can't run for or hold office there. There's no logic in that discrepancy.

Teachers? They can do all those things and more. There are really no restriction on what they can do politically. They can chair political campaigns or local party organizations. They can raise funds and pass out campaign literature. And they can hold partisan political office. After this year's redistricting takes effect for the 2023 General Assembly session, my representative will be someone who's a school principal in Jackson County.

This is hypocrisy codified. Teachers are one of the biggest politically active groups out there. They're loud and they're influential. But are they more important than social workers, corrections officers, state troopers, snowplow drivers, or others who are paid with tax dollars and perform vital public services? Why should they have privileges that other public employees don't?

Not all that long ago, Harry Moberly was one of the most influential members of the House of Representatives. He was the longtime chairman of the Appropriations and Revenue Committee when Democrats controlled state government. He was also a high-ranking administrator at Eastern Kentucky University, meaning he was able to use his legislative position to funnel state funds to EKU. Wasn't this an obvious conflict of interest? If an employee of a state university can serve in the legislature, why can't an engineer with the Transportation Cabinet or a Kentucky State Police detective or an auditor with the Department of Revenue?

There's an obvious fairness solution here. Much of KRS 18A needs to be repealed to give state employees the same political and First Amendment rights as other public employees. There's absolutely no common-sense reason that state merit system workers can't do the same things in the political process as a tenured school teacher.

Failing that, public school employees who serve in the legislature should be prohibited from voting on matters pertaining to education. There are ethics laws and policies that prevent the state from awarding contracts to businesses connected to certain officials. Shouldn't that extend to legislators voting to fund their employers? Should a public school employee be allowed to funnel money to his or her school district via the Department of Education?

Don't look for this statutory hypocrisy to be corrected anytime soon. Teachers wield a lot of political clout in Kentucky, and they don't want their influence to be curtailed, eliminated, or diluted. So expect the state to have to endure this double standard from now on, when certain voices are amplified and others are muted.